Subway Squawkers: Duke Lacrosse case expert weighs in on Selena Roberts’ credibility

Nice scoop here by Lisa Swan…

Blogger KC Johnson is a college professor whose meticulously researched and argued Durham-in-Wonderland site helped prove the players’ innocence. He is also, along with law expert Stuart Taylor Jr., author of Until Proven Innocent, the definitive book about the Duke Lacrosse case.

In his blog, Johnson has criticized Roberts’ smears against the players, and her later disingenousness about what she really wrote. Anyhow, here’s what Johnson had to say on Roberts’ book. I have included links to the columns he mentions.

In an email interview, the Durham-in-Wonderland blogger told me:

It seems to me that maintaining credibility is vital for any journalist. Roberts, of course, may very well be correct in her reporting about A-Rod. (Let’s face it: A-Rod himself has no credibility, given that he outright lied to the nation in the Katie Couric interview.)

But based on what we saw from Roberts in the lacrosse case, nothing that she says or writes should be accepted unless it can be independently verified. After all, Roberts: (a) demonstrated a disregard for the truth (her March and April 2006 columns included factually inaccurate items that she has, to this day, refused to retract or correct); (b) made wild leaps of logic (linking the players’ supposed guilt to a critique of campus culture--only to claim, in March 2007, that she had never made such a linkage); and (c) absurdly asserted in March 2008 that criticism of her reporting came about because “some segments of the Duke lacrosse crowd did not enjoy the scrutiny of their world.”